Contributing to Better Nature Tourism

By Chris Warren

Created 07/11/2011 - 09:06

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Date:

10 October 2011

On 10th October, Chris was invited to attend a national parks workshop, and luckily they agreed to me coming along to. The day was great we had a nice guided walk around some of Fitzroy Falls (which I hadn’t had chance to visit until that date) it was spectacular, I really loved it. We then got a free bus journey to Minnamurra Rainforest Centre and had another guided walk.

After lunch we took part in a workshop. National Parks spoke about the facts and figures of the visitor numbers and how much money the National Parks make and things like that. I was very lucky that Chris took me along, because all the people invited were important tourism related people, some private and some public sector employees, they were asked to share their thoughts on strategies to increase visitor numbers to the parks and how they could appeal to the different target markets. I kept quiet but the experience was thought provoking, and I took a lot from the day. It is easy to be dismissive of these sort of events, as often you feel that your thoughts are not heard, but from this I learnt firsthand this is not always the case, since the event Chris has been back for a couple of meetings with the parks management about some of his comments and to discuss his ideas for Kangaroo Valley and better tourism experiences in protected areas, which is just great.